What We Hold, Holds Us

A journal entry from 2012

I can't keep waiting to write about something I can say, I know!

So I begin with what I don’t know.

I don’t know what everything is for.

What is this meaninglessness for?

Why do I feel empty from what I have lost and can’t accomplish?

Why the feeling of an unbreakable and endless circle?

The more I listen and try—why does pointlessness only grow?

Why do I feel what I don’t want to feel?

Why the struggle within me, when already there is a world against me... that throws itself relentlessly at me?

With waning strength, why can’t I move?

What am I missing?

What is the piece I cannot grasp?

Why can I think of nothing else, but must continue to experience more loss, more failure, more incapability, more shame?

More added.

And then some more.

And then comes panic.

I’ve done all that has been asked of me, but what is this that effort has brought me?

What is this for?

....................Be still.

That was me at the start of 2012.

Homeless. In a foreign country. Torn from a relationship I had built my life around. Standing in a world I no longer recognised.

And though thirteen years have passed, the questions remain.

Because no matter how much we evolve, no matter how much we learn, those same thoughts don’t simply leave us.

They return.

Not always from the same conditions.

Not from the same circumstances.

But the feeling does.

It shifts in form, evolves through emotion, takes on new shapes. But it still arrives.

And without something to combat it, we are left searching.

But for what?

I never asked for these thoughts.

They come uninvited—spiralling in, heavy and relentless, filling the space where certainty wants to live.

I wasn’t just searching for answers.

I was searching for air.

Why do I feel trapped inside something I cannot name?

Why, no matter how much I try, do I feel only the weight of effort—never the relief of arrival?

And more than anything—what am I missing?

There was no answer.

Only silence.

Only more thought.

Only the realisation that thought itself was the thing holding me there.

I had never considered that before.

That the mind itself could be the weight.

But if thought was what bound me—could it also be what freed me?

But here’s the catch:

You cannot think your way out of thought.

This is why self-help fails.

This is why positive thinking collapses in on itself.

Because the mind cannot fix the mind.

And yet—We still try.

We struggle against thought. We fight it.

We tell ourselves, I shouldn’t feel this way. I shouldn’t think this way.

But struggle only makes the thought stronger.

Because what you resist—you attach to.

And if you attach to thought, it owns you.

So always again and again we face, what do you do?

Where do you begin when thought is the thing trapping you?

"Do—And You Will Hear"

It is a principle deep in the wisdom of Kabbalah.

An answer that does not come from the mind.

It comes from movement.

But first, the mind must be released from the body.

Because it is only from stillness that the first proper action can be made.

At the time, I didn’t know what I was doing.

I had no wisdom to rely on, no knowledge of the teachings I would later receive.

But something in me knew—thought was not enough.

I had to take action.

I had to move.

But I had no real understanding of my body, its emotions, or where to start.

I had no sense of control over anything in my life.

But one person—a friend, a brother—helped guide me into the sensitivity of what the thoughts were trying to face me with. Giving me a first true step into myself—into something very real.

And now, in 2025, the weight of this principle is clearer than ever:

"Do—and you will hear."

Understanding does not come before action.

It follows it.

You cannot think your way into transformation.

You must step into it.

And this is true not just for physical change, but for everything in life.

We want to feel better before we move.

We want clarity before we take action.

We want certainty before we let go.

But it does not work that way.

Imagine a man drowning in a river.

He screams for help, thrashing against the current, desperate for rescue.

But what he does not realise—what no one can tell him—is that the rock he is holding is drowning him.

He grips it tightly, believing it is the only thing keeping him from being pulled down.

But the truth is the opposite: The rock is the very thing pulling him under.

If he let go, he would rise and not drown.

But he does not let go.

Because the mind—when left to itself—does not know how to release the thing that is drowning it.

We hold on.

To pain.

To identity.

To thoughts we never asked for, but somehow believe define us.

And we wonder why we cannot breathe.

So, again, what do we do?

We do not fight thought.

We do not try to fix thought.

We step into it to feel it and rise above it.

This is the concept in Kabbalah called Faith Above Reason.

Not blind faith.

Not wishful thinking.

But the willingness to move beyond what the mind can justify.

It is the only way out of the loop.

struggle only makes the thought stronger.

Because what you resist—you attach to.

And if you attach to thought—then the only way to shift it is not through force—But through stillness.

Through letting go.

Stepping through it, from above it.

This is the opening to my new series exploring 'A State of Being.'

A state of being is not something to be achieved.

It is something to be practiced.

We do not wait to understand before we act.

We act—and understanding follows.

We do not wait for thought to clear before we move.

We move—and thought aligns.

Because transformation does not happen in the mind.

It happens in the living of it.

So step.

Step into it.

Not with certainty.

Not with perfect clarity.

But in presence—finding those who are willing to walk beside you the same way.

Bradley J Cleary